The Joshua Tree

The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by the Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 9 March 1987 by Island Records. In contrast to the ambient experimentation of their 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire, for The Joshua Tree the band aimed for a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures. The album is influenced by American and Irish roots music, and through sociopolitically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, it contrasts the group's antipathy for the "real America" with their fascination with the "mythical America". The record's theme was inspired by their experiences in the United States, as well as American literature and politics.

Recording began in January 1986 in Ireland, and to foster a relaxed, creative atmosphere, the group primarily recorded in two houses. Several events during the sessions helped shape the conscious tone of the album, including the band's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concerts for Amnesty International, the death of their roadie Greg Carroll, and lead vocalist Bono's travels to Central America. Recording was completed in November 1986; additional production continued into January 1987. Throughout the sessions, U2 sought a "cinematic" quality for the record, one that would evoke a sense of location, in particular, the open spaces of the U.S. They represented this in the sleeve photography depicting them in American desert landscapes.

The Joshua Tree received critical acclaim, increasing U2's stature significantly. It topped the charts in over 20 countries, including the U.S. for the group's first number-one album there, and it became the fastest-selling album in British history at that point. It produced the hit singles "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name", the first two of which became the group's only number-one singles in the U.S. The Joshua Tree won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 1988 ceremony. The group supported the record with the Joshua Tree Tour, which was the highest-grossing North American tour of 1987 and marked the first time in their career that they performed in stadiums.

Frequently listed among the greatest albums of all time, The Joshua Tree is one of the world's best-selling albums, with over 25 million copies sold, including a diamond certification in the U.S. U2 commemorated the record's 20th anniversary with a remastered re-release, and its 30th anniversary with concert tours and a reissue. In 2014, The Joshua Tree was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry, having been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.

Prior to The Joshua Tree, U2 had released four studio albums and were an internationally successful band, particularly as a live act having toured every year in the 1980s. The group's stature and the public's anticipation for a new album grew following their 1984 record The Unforgettable Fire, their subsequent tour, and their participation in Live Aid in 1985. U2 began writing new material in mid-1985 following the Unforgettable Fire Tour.

U2's manager Paul McGuinness recounted that The Joshua Tree originated from the band's "great romance" with the United States, as they had toured the country for up to five months per year in the first half of the 1980s. Leading up to the album sessions, U2's lead vocalist Bono read the works of American writers such as Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver so as to understand, in the words of Hot Press editor Niall Stokes, "those on the fringes of the promised land, cut off from the American dream". Following a September–October 1985 humanitarian visit to Egypt and Ethiopia with his wife Ali, Bono said: "Spending time in Africa and seeing people in the pits of poverty, I still saw a very strong spirit in the people, a richness of spirit I didn't see when I came home... I saw the spoiled child of the Western world. I started thinking, 'They may have a physical desert, but we've got other kinds of deserts.' And that's what attracted me to the desert as a symbol of some sort."

After recording vocals for Steven Van Zandt's anti-apartheid project Sun City in August 1985, Bono made an additional contribution to the album in October that was inspired by his burgeoning interest in roots music. While in New York, he spent time with musicians Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, who played him blues and country music. Bono was embarrassed by his lack of familiarity with the genres, as most of U2's musical knowledge began with punk rock in their youth in the mid-1970s. He realised that U2 "had no tradition" and felt as if they "were from outer space". This inspired him to write the blues-influenced song "Silver and Gold", which he recorded with Richards and Ronnie Wood and convinced Van Zandt to add to Sun City. Until that time, U2 had been apathetic towards roots music, but after spending time with the Waterboys and fellow Irish band Hothouse Flowers, they felt a sense of indigenous Irish music blending with American folk music. Nascent friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Richards encouraged Bono to look back to rock's roots and to focus on building his skills as a songwriter and lyricist. He explained: "I used to think that writing words was old-fashioned, so I sketched. I wrote words on the microphone. For The Joshua Tree, I felt the time had come to write words that meant something, out of my experience." Dylan told Bono about his own debt to Irish music, while Bono further demonstrated his interest in music traditions in his duet with Irish Celtic and folk group Clannad on the 1986 track "In a Lifetime".

"We had experimented a lot in the making of [The Unforgettable Fire]. We had done quite revolutionary things... So we felt, going into The Joshua Tree, that maybe options were not a good thing, that limitations might be positive. And so we decided to work within the limitations of the song as a starting point. We thought: let's actually write songs. We wanted the record to be less vague, open-ended, atmospheric and impressionistic. To make it more straightforward, focused and concise."